I keep hearing stories of successful people losing their jobs at some point in their career before they found career happiness or success.

I would always think, “what did they actually do to get fired?” How are they this happy and/or successful now?

How did they bounce back? As if this was an impossible feat. I’d love to hear anyone’s stories around getting fired and how it shaped their future. Please share yours below!

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The first time I was canned, it taught me a timeless lesson on trust. I’ll start:

A very young and naive me back in 2004 once worked at a used sports apparel shop.  I found out soon after working there the market prices on used hockey equipment and baseball gloves were much lower in the store than on the emerging eBay. I used my 40% employee discount to buy the already low-priced merch and then resold them on eBay for quite a markup.

My boss found out his old gear was on eBay and the next time he came in he said I was fired. I was perplexed. I thought I was doing him a favor by clearing out some old merchandise off his shelves. But he thought I was stealing it. He had already made up his mind when he brought me in to show me an eBay auction page of his old goalie pads I had used my employee discount to buy (and now resell). I knew I had done something wrong at this point but I couldn’t figure out what. I tried to explain myself but it was too late.

Although bitter at the time, I understood soon after in hindsight why it was totally justified.

What I should have done was told him I saw some places online where he could resell his equipment for a much higher price and at a much faster pace and I would manage it all for a cut of sales. But this didn’t happen. Trust was lost and so was the opportunity.

Business partnership and any business relationship requires trust first for anything else. If you don’t have this you have nothing.

Lesson learned.

How about you? I know there are plenty out there.